Lightroom Classic CC for the Professional Photographer

Q & A - Changes between Lightroom® Classic and Lightroom CC

Lightroom Classic CC for the Professional Photographer

Lesson 2 of 14

Q & A - Changes between Lightroom® Classic and Lightroom CC

Lesson Info

Q & A - Changes between Lightroom® Classic and Lightroom CC

So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna show you different methods. We're gonna show you a work flow of starting with Lightroom CC because you wanna secure your files. If that's your method, if you're like, I want to secure my files first then I wanna work on 'em. We're gonna start with that work flow going from Lightroom CC to Lightroom Classic then we're going to go back and start with a faster work flow. If you're not as concerned about securing the files first, your major objective is to get it done, then you're gonna start with Lightroom Classic and it's going to end up in Lightroom CC. 'Cause it cross talks like this. But the difference is that Lightroom CC, anything that goes in, the full resolution file goes to the Cloud. Anything that you put into Lightroom Classic has to be told to go to the Cloud. And you tell it to go to the Cloud by virtue of a collection. You tell that collection, I want you to go to the Cloud. And we'll show you that in a minute. So, by virtue of a c...

ollection, you tell it to send something to the Cloud and when it does, it sends what's called a Smart Preview to the Cloud. And a Smart Preview is different than a full resolution raw image in that it's not the full thing, but it's still raw. It's just a smaller raw. And don't fear a Smart Preview. Because I've printed 30 inch prints from a Smart Preview and they look good. So you can get a lot out of a Smart Preview even though it's not the full original image. So you're pretty well backed up here. Just not 100 percent. So we will show also that idea of working inside of Classic, sending your previews to the Cloud, and then later on we'll back up. Alright? Okay, so that's what we're going to do today. Any questions so far? Because I know I've just gone over a whole lot of stuff. And when you ask a question, make sure you grab that mic.
Yeah, this is great. Can you go back to that computer for a moment?
Yes, I'm gonna walk over here. I'm here.
To CC, where you showed the 100 percent to zero percent double slider? That's a little bit confusing to me. 'Causes it's 100 percent of my images? Or a 100 percent of the memory? If I've got a terabyte in the Cloud and that's got available, maybe 60 gigs of memory space left, if I say 100 percent, is that gonna try to jam 100 percent of that terabyte into that computer?
Okay, good question. So let's go back over to our secondary computer. So the slider is telling you that you have X amount of space on your hard drive. Let's say this thing has 256 gigabytes of RAM on it as a hard drive, 'cause it's a small little computer. If I decided I wanna keep some of my files here, as much as I can, I would determine, how much of my hard drive am I willing to devote to photos? Let's say 50 percent. So then if I take this up to 50 percent, it's going to then say, okay, so he has 256, we're only gonna give him a hundred and twenty whatever. So it's a little over 100 gigabytes we're gonna devote to photos and we won't go beyond that. And so then what's gonna happen is every photo I put in here, it's gonna fill up 'till it hits a hundred and some odd gigabytes and then everything after that has to be stored in the Cloud and not here. And what it'll do is it'll say, okay, what are the things that he's not looking at? Those are the things I'm gonna remove to make space for more that he's putting in. And then if I, for some reason, were to add stuff to it from this computer, so I sent stuff to the Cloud from this computer, or maybe I sent it from my iPad or from my phone or something like that, it's gonna go up there and it's only going to deliver, this is Lightroom Classic on this computer, so it's only gonna deliver the Smart Previews and so then it can deliver the Smart Previews, 'cause it can only deliver what's in the Cloud down to the other computer, so it can deliver the Smart Preview down to that computer. Or actually, that's this computer. So down to this computer that's storing 50 percent of its files, 50 percent of its space. And it'll deliver that until it fills up to 50 percent of the space and then it's gonna say, okay, I can't put any more on this computer unless I make room for it. So it'll get rid of stuff. But always, it's in the Cloud. It's always accessible. Because remember, this thing right here, we're literally using zero percent. And yet I'm looking at all of my photos. And I'm using zero percent of my hard drive for photos.
But only while you're connected to Wifi and unless you download, prior to being offline, the photos you wanna work on.
There's proxies here. So I can work on these on an airplane without Wifi. I just can't export the full file. I can still work on it. I can still click on an image and I can adjust it without Wifi. So if I turn off my Wifi, and I'm not sure if I can do that right now, can I? Can I do that? Can I turn off my Wifi right now?
I think so.
Yes? Okay, so I'm going to turn off my Wifi right now. So I am no longer connected to the Internet. Yes, we're still seeing it. So now I can go in and click on this image and I'm going to adjust that image even though I am not on the Cloud. I can still take this image and say I want it to be a little bit brighter. I wanna add a little contrast to it. I wanna bring the blacks down. I'm still working on this photo. The only thing that this, and again, it's zero percent. I'm not using any space for the full photos on this. I've got little previews that are inside the catalog. And I think right now, this catalog or this library, this library of images is like a gigabyte right now. Something like that. So it's not huge. Does that make sense? Now, I can turn this back on. And when I get back onto Wifi that's when it'll say... See how that little blue thing is synchronizing? It just sent the changes that I made to this photo up to the Cloud. It waited and then as soon as it was time it went. It's always looking for the Cloud. Always, always, always. But if you're not on the Cloud you can still use the photos, 'cause the proxies are still here. Got it, does that make sense? Yes, question.
So it's not asking whether or not you want to send those changes to the Cloud, it's just doing it automatically?
Correct. Anything you do on any computer on any device is going to send to the Cloud and send it to all photos. Now, if you undo, it'll undo all over. What you've done is you've created a system where no matter where you are, you're working on the same thing. So now it's not a difference between working on this computer and that computer, you're just working on the Cloud. You just have different accesses to the Cloud. You're working on the photo in the Cloud, but you're doing it through these conduits.
But it's working on the actual image, not on the soft preview, I think it was called?
Well, it's... (laughs) The dirty little secret is, in Lightroom, you have never been working on your photos ever. From Lightroom 1, you never actually toughed your photos. Your photos have always just been sitting somewhere on a local hard drive, and they're just been sitting there. Nothing has happened to them ever. Even if it's a JPEG, nothing has happened to it. When you adjust it, the catalog itself is storing the information and saying if he were to make this black and white, what would it look like? And then it draws you a picture of that. The only time that that information pairs with the original information is when you, say, send out a JPEG, send out a TIFF file, something like that. Then it takes the original file, applies the changes, and sends it out the door. But still, the original file hasn't changed. And so this is no departure from anything. It's just that that file is in the Cloud and now your catalog is resident on this computer and it's resident on this computer and it's resident on this iPad and it's also resident up in the Cloud. So if you're on Lightroom Web and if I touch a slider, that slider holds, inside of its own brain, inside of Lightroom's catalog, and then as soon as it has access to the Cloud it sends it to the Cloud and then the Cloud holds that same information, but the photo never changes ever. So it's completely non-destructive even though it is everywhere. And it can be done from any point, anywhere. How cool is that? I got another question back there.
So for this to work, do you need to be using both the Classic and the CC version of Lightroom?
Great question. No. Let's go back to the primary computer here. And I'm showing you this schematic so you can see how the ecosystem works. You can use just this portion. In fact, there's a plan for 4.99 a month that gives you just access to the Cloud and mobile applications. So that all you use is iPads, iPhones, the Cloud, and Lightroom web. And all of this stuff is not used. 4.99 a month and you have that storage in the Cloud and you can use it from any of your devices. And that's a pretty impressive plan. Remember, I don't have to take my pictures from my phone. I can. Any picture I take on my phone will go into Lightroom and then go to the Cloud and then send out to all of the devices, but I could also just plug this card into my iPad and I could pull in an entire photo shoot of CR2 original raw photos and it will go to the Cloud and I will adjust them on either my phone, my iPad, or I'll go to Lightroom Web on a computer that has a calibrated monitor and work on 'em. And I'll have the full power of camera raw without having to pay for Lightroom or Photoshop and I can still do it, for 4.99 a month. So that's a really impressive thing that now those people who don't use computers don't have to pay for all this. They're just paying for that. So yes, you don't need access to classic 'cause you could just do it on here or you could just do it on Lightroom CC and Lightroom CC could talk to another computer of Lightroom CC, 'cause you have two seats. Whenever you purchase a Creative Cloud plan, you have two seats. So like, you could have a computer and your wife could have a computer or your spouse, or your friend, or your co-worker or whoever, those people can have an extra computer and then anything you put on your computer is on theirs, anything they put on theirs is on yours. And you could just share files back and forth that way. And they'll see, oh, he put a new collection in and click on it and see it. Yeah.
So, I do my editing in Photoshop. Does this sync with other products other than Lightroom?
Yes, and I'll show you that a little bit later today how Photoshop works into this. We can actually go into Photoshop, and this is new to Photoshop as of Wednesday of last week, that you can actually open up Photoshop and you can go to your main screen where you open things, and you can open directly from the Cloud. So now you have access to all your Lightroom collections straight from Photoshop. So let's say you did a Creative Cloud plan but you weren't using Lightroom Classic, you were just using Lightroom CC, putting stuff into the Cloud, and then you went to Photoshop and opened it up. You wouldn't have to open it right from Lightroom. You would just go to Photoshop and you'd go, okay, in my Cloud I know in this collection, I've got this. You'd go to that album. And by the way, I'm gonna use album and collection simultaneously because Classic calls it collections and Lightroom CC calls it albums. They're the same thing. Collections, albums, same thing. They're just different names. So you could go from Photoshop directly to that album or that collection and grab it straight from Photoshop. And if you were in Photoshop, you could also send stuff directly to Lightroom from Photoshop. So there's now a new connection level from Photoshop as well. Any more questions? Any questions out there? Yeah.
Does CC let you do tagging? Does that work?
Okay, so Lightroom CC does have the ability to add keywords into it. So does Lightroom Mobile now. You can add keywords in Lightroom Mobile, you can add 'em in Classic, you can add 'em in CC. However, the connection between Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic, the tags don't transfer just yet. And I pray that they don't forget that connection. Because it's imperative that those keywords go back and forth between them. But right now, the problem is that Classic has nested keywords and keyword hierarchies and stuff like that and they're worried about the connection back to Lightroom CC and Lightroom Mobile because that's just the flat keyword concept. No keyword has a hierarchy or anything, so it's all flat. And so they're worried about that connection. So I hope that what they do, and, Adobe, if you're listening, just simply anything that's in Classic, if you send it over to CC, just flatten it out and give me all the keywords. That's what they should do. But I think that connection is problematic and so they gotta make sure they do it right. So right now, if you do them in CC, your keywords will show up in other CC and it'll show up in Lightroom Mobile, but it doesn't quite show up in Lightroom Classic. So there's some connection issues with those at the moment. But you can add them into CC and you can add them into Lightroom Mobile. But there is one way. There is one way to get your keywords to move over to CC.
It was more like if, say, I wanna pull all my portraits off the Cloud and look at that on the mobile device. That would be the interest of, like, the keywording being up in the Cloud.
Okay, we're gonna talk about that in work flow. We'll show you different ideas. And you'll be really happy about what you can do. Even without keywords. This new update had made it possible for you never to keyword again if you want. So look forward to that. Because I have taught people until I'm blue in the face that you should keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword, and now I'm gonna tell you eh, you might not have to keyword all that much. So I am pretty much killing my entire mantra. I'm throwing it out the window. Because now I don't really have to keyword all that much. There is some keywording that I still am gonna have to do, but I will show you that in one of the later segments so stay tuned, don't go anywhere.
We are getting lots of great questions online. I'm gonna hit you with some of these.
Okay, let's bring them out. This is what we're talking about. We gotta answer all these questions in this first segment about what the heck is going on because in these next segments we're gonna be talking about some cool stuff. And I wanna show you how to work on photos and how to find photos and stuff. A lot of fun things happening.
Totally, so some of these you've already sort of answered, but people need clarification. So if it's a simple one, let's blow through 'em and get through as many of these as we can. Can I download the raw file from Cloud to computer?
Yes. In fact, the raw file is up in the Cloud no matter how it was delivered there. It could have been delivered from my phone. But however it was delivered, once it's in the Cloud, then it's going to automatically be delivered to CC. If I've told it to do a hundred percent, automatically delivered there. It's also automatically delivered to Lightroom Classic in its full resolution to wherever you tell Classic to put that kinda stuff. And we're gonna go through this in a minute. It's also delivered as a proxy down to someplace that you've told it zero percent. So it's automatically done. But you also have access through the Web to go find that file and deliver it to your computer. I can go to your computer, hi-jack your computer. Log in, grab that same file, and go right into your computer and then work on it from Photoshop or wherever. And I also can go straight to that from Photoshop without access to any of these. I would just go straight from Photoshop, go find my collection, and then it'll open up as a full resolution file inside of Photoshop. I work on it, and then I can save it right back into the Web and then it'll deliver it out to all of my computers. So I don't have to be on my computer to do it.
Question about the proxy. Still need clarification about what we're seeing. Is it a proxy? Or, the question is, is the proxy the same resolution as the original. So if you're working on that proxy image-
No, it won't be the same resolution. Think of it is... This person that's asking this question... Do you know the name of the person?
S. Adams.
So S. Adams, if S. Adams is working and understands the difference between originals and Smart Previews, the proxy is what we're talking about. It's a Smart Preview, so it's kind of a little tiny raw file that allows you to see what it looks like. It's got the same kind of latitude. It's not a JPEG, it's a proxy. It's a raw proxy. And so it can adjust and show you what it's gonna look like. However, it's not going to be as big because that would cost a lot of space. If you want the big file, then you tell it to store 100 percent and pull the original down.
So what you're saying is you can be comfortable working on and editing on that proxy?
Yes. In fact, you can be so comfortable about that that Lightroom even has an option, in Lightroom Classic, to not work on the original files. To speed up Lightroom, you can actually go into the preferences and say only work on the proxies. Only work on the Smart Previews. And it'll build Smart Previews and it won't even look at the original files and literally these will do nothing. It won't even go to them. And that helps speed Lightroom up. So the only thing you can't do on a proxy is zoom in at 100 percent and see exactly what the sharpness is gonna look like. That's when you need the full file. Almost everything else you can do.
Susanna asked, "What happened to Lightroom Mobile? "People are still referencing it the same, "but it hasn't been replaced by Lightroom CC."
Correct, Lightroom Mobile is exactly the same. In fact, it's gotten some updates. So it's got newer things in it, it's better. But what they've done is they've stopped referencing it as Lightroom Mobile and they just talk about it as Lightroom CC on your mobile device, because literally, it is the same. In fact, if you look at Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom CC, they look pretty much the same. And they're trying to keep that very similar. So you're gonna see those two kind of mirror each other for the rest of... They're gonna just keep mirroring each other. Because they want them to be exactly the same. It's Lightroom CC, but it happens to be on a mobile device or it happens to be on your computer, but it's the same program that's going on. So you'll see those mirror each other quite nicely.
Cool. Do presets synchronize between your computers?
Okay, I've done entire Creative Live segments on trying to get your presets to sync from one computer to another back in Lightroom 5, 6, Lightroom CC, things like that. But now that we're in Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC, we're still at the point where presets do not synchronize automatically between things. Which is unfortunate, because it's something they should have done three or four years ago, but they haven't. However, with the Cloud being so prevalent I'm pretty certain that you're going to see some kind of synchronization coming through with presets. However, I will say this, and we'll show you how to do it, you can take any of your current presets from Lightroom Classic and you can install them into Lightroom CC. It's not an automatic synchronization, but you can take them from there and install them on Lightroom CC so that you have them available to you when you're working out on the road and you just wanna play with photo, all of your presets are also there. So we can do that. And I will show you how to do that. In fact, by the way, if you purchase this course, I am giving about 80 presets away. Film Look, so it's basically film presets that are going to be available to you to install on Lightroom CC or in Lightroom Classic. So it works in both. And that film collection is here. It's on downloads. So when you buy the course, you can download that set of presets and install them, and we'll show you how to install them, but also if you want to purchase other presets I've also created a 50 percent off anything on my store which is at jaredplatt.com forward slash shop, and the code is Creative Live 2017. So when we get to the idea of building presets and working on presets, you will have access to those presets here by buying this course. You'll have access to your own presets if you have some presets already, we'll show you how to grab those. And then you also can go and grab presets from me. And there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of presets on my store, so knock yourself out.
Cool. One last question, and then we'll keep moving forward, "I'm not clear, I have no interest in the Cloud. "What does that mean for my ongoing use of Classic? "Are there limits on the storage now? "Or on my editing abilities?" So this person doesn't wanna go to the Cloud-
Alright, so if you are the person who doesn't wanna go to the Cloud, then nothing in Lightroom Classic changes except you have more tools. So as long as you are a Lightroom CC subscriber, you have more tools and a faster Lightroom. That's what you have. If you are a Lightroom 6 user, nothing changes at all because you don't get any of the new tools. Lightroom 6 is the end of that road. You're not going to get more tools out of it. It's going to stay exactly the same. So if you're going to want new tools, which, one particularly, tool that I'm going to show today, is worth the upgrade from whatever you're on to Lightroom Classic, CC. Because that tool is amazing. But if you want updated tools, you have to be in the Cloud. Because they are just not going to add new tools to Lightroom 6, or 5, or whatever. It's just not going to happen. So you have to be on Lightroom CC or Lightroom Classic. Now, if you are on Lightroom CC, you get a Lightroom CC subscription. Either the photographers or the full subscription, you have access to Photoshop, Lightroom CC, and Lightroom Classic as well as all of the Cloud services. So you have access to all of that kinda stuff. So if you upgrade to Lightroom CC services, you do have Classic. And it's an updated Classic. You don't have to install Lightroom CC if you don't wanna have access to the Cloud, if you have no interest in the Cloud's services, but I would like to hear that person's opinion after they've used the Cloud services. Because they're incredible. The fact that I can secure my images from wherever I happen to be. The fact that I can see my images, I can share my images from my phone that I was working on this morning in the studio without having to export anything. That kind of stuff is amazing. So we're gonna go through this. And at the end of the day, I would be very interested if that person is still thinking they have no interest in the Cloud. Yeah?
One quick question before we move on. With the images out there in the Cloud, what does slow Internet upload download speeds do to my ability to, if I'm on the 100 percent, now obviously if I'm on the zero percent computer it's just working off of Smart Preview, it's gonna be a smaller file coming down. But if it's a full size file, how does that slow Internet upload or download speed, how does it affect my ability to work?
Good question. So we do live in a land of, like, here in Seattle, you guys have some smokin' fast Internet. Faster than I've ever seen. Because of all the Amazon and whatever. So I went to my hotel and I did a little speed test on my hotel, and it's faster than... I pay a lot of money at my business for Internet back in Phoenix, and it's like five, 10 times as fast. It is crazy smokin' fast. So I was loving Internet in my hotel. I was like, I'm gonna upload a whole bunch of stuff. Whatever I gotta upload, I'll do it here at the hotel. Because it was just happening. And then there are other people that have no Internet or they're basically working off their phone's Internet or if you're traveling, you hit hotels that have horrible Internet speeds. And when I hit those hotels, I literally take my phone and tether my phone to my laptop because my phone has a better Internet connection through cellular. So we have a lot of variants in Internet speed. So if you have a slow Internet connection, then uploading your originals is going to take a lot longer. So it might take overnight to upload a job rather than, for me, it might take me a hour to upload a job and for someone at the hotel I was just staying at, it might take them 20 minutes to upload a job. So Lightroom CC has the ability, and so does Lightroom Classic, to pause the synchronization. And I would highly suggest, especially right now, because there's a little bit of a glitch in Lightroom CC when you're uploading, and I'll show you that in a minute, but when you're importing, you're going to pause the synchronization, import it, then unpause it, and let it upload. Because they put the hierarchy on uploading instead of on importing and so the CPU spends too much effort uploading and not enough importing and so it takes forever to import if you're also uploading at the same time. But if you pause it, then that hierarchy, well this goes away. And then importing happens really fast. And then as soon as it's done, unpause, and then it'll start uploading. So it's just, and they already know about it, and they just need to switch that hierarchy and say no, importing is first then uploading happens after. They have to just deal with that. So they'll get that. And releases will happen constantly and so you'll see new stuff happen and that's one of the changes that you'll have to see. But if you're working here or here or here, your actual speed of working on your photos, as long as the photo is on your computer or even the proxy is on your computer, there's no slowdown, there's no change. You're just working. The only question about Internet speed is how quickly does the change get sent up and how quickly does the photo get sent up or pulled down? That's the only thing you have to wonder about. And you're just gonna have to test and see how that goes. By the way, changes happen really fast. Because it doesn't have to send much information. So if I change something on computer one, the change is like, a couple kilobytes of information goes right up to the Cloud and then goes down to these and it's done. So within seconds, all of your systems will have those changes because it's really, really small information. It's the photos that take time getting up and down. Now, there are gonna be some people that the Cloud is going to be of very minimal usage, so people who have a very slow Internet connection, I would suggest that you don't go with the Lightroom CC option, stay with Lightroom Classic, and then use Lightroom CC, but use it sparingly. So you're gonna use it for small stuff. And we'll talk about that as we start going into these work flows. You'll see what I mean by use it sparingly. So I'm in the crowd that uses Lightroom Classic first, Lightroom CC as a helper. There are going to be some people who are going to use Lightroom CC first and then they will go to Classic if they need to or they might use Classic as like an absolute repository for all photographs. Like there's a lot of ways you could use that, but they'll use Lightroom CC first. That's not as seriously heavy or professional. So heavy use professionals will use Lightroom Classic. And then they will add Lightroom CC in as a helper. And it's still a very, very good helper.

Class Description

Adobe® has just released the newest version of Lightroom at Adobe MAX. There are major improvements and a few new tools to learn about, but more important are the updates and improvements in the entire Lightroom® Creative Cloud® ecosystem. Whether you are a professional photographer or a serious photo enthusiast, you need to know how the new Lightroom ecosystem works and what it can do for you. Join the world's Lightroom guru and learn about the newest updates in Lightroom and how to harness the power of the Creative Cloud. In this course you will learn how to put the new tools in the Creative Cloud to use in your serious photography workflow: new organizational strategies, simple image backup, universal access to your photos, and so much more. Adobe’s new Lightroom ecosystem, including Lightroom CC, Web, Mobile, and Classic are the beginning of a new future in photo-post production. Come learn what Adobe’s powerful new tools mean for you and how to implement them into your workflow.

This class is for Professional and serious photo enthusiasts or anyone who is a serious Lightroom user and wants to learn how to increase efficiency in their workflow and have even more fun with their photo collections.

user-200a2a

Really like Jared's teaching style...has a great sense of humor & education to support anything he says. Learned a tremendous amount and feel comfortable & confident that I understand the basics and how to take advantage of the LIGHTROOM ecosystem. Good job....this was my first Creative Live purchase and am very satisfied.

JennMercille

Before I took this class I used Lightroom Classic CC as a culling tool more than for editing. Jared Platt showed me how to speed up my editing workflow, and rely more on Lightroom Classic and less on Photoshop, which cut my editing time nearly in half. Platt teaches in a holistic style with humor, demonstrations and tons of knowledge that is easy to follow. I really enjoyed this class, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to speed up their workflow or take advantage of the new mobility features that Adobe has added to the Lightroom platforms.

Candy Smith

Jared does a great job of getting over the fear of the changes that my photography friends were talking about when the cloud went into effect. He really encourages you to take full advantage of all that is available with the CC subscription across all your devices. Huge time saver which I appreciate as I have many projects going at the same time. I now travel way more than I thought I would, and Jared helped me move into a more mobil form of editing so I can use my time more wisely.